Canadian Lawyer

letters to the editor Send your letters to: gail.cohen@thomsonreuters.com Comments from canadianlawyermag.com Re: Discipline Dichotomy January 2013 You might have mentioned that the judgment against the Quebec bar regulator for failing to regulate effectively was upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada. You note that the Barreau fought the plaintiff all the way to the Supreme Court but don't say what happened. A case where the SCC got it wrong was the recent decision about the Montreal lawyer who wrote a strong, but completely private, letter to the judge in a case where he thought the judge has been unfair and improper. The judge took the letter to the Barreau, which disciplined the lawyer. The SCC upheld the discipline. This seems appalling to me , that one cannot privately express one's views directly to the person whose conduct is at issue. There was no defamation, no public conduct whatever. — online comment from JOHN G than truly protecting the public. In 2011, I paid a few hundred dollars for a mandatory CPD course provided by LSUC dealing with contingency fees. A presenter explained it is appropriate to charge an hourly fee in a wrongful dismissal action and in addition take 30 per cent of funds obtained beyond the initial severance offered to the dismissed employee client, without having to enter into a written contingency fee arrangement. I called the law society to say that this could not possibly be correct, and to ask if this was the way things are done in the big city (T.O.). The response was, "You're right, the presenter is incorrect. However we're a complaint driven organization, and if no one complains we'll take no action." How about sending a proactive correcting memo to all who paid money to hear this stuff? Is LSUC now prevented from disciplining lawyers who aggressively adopt the improper practice? — online comment from IAN Colin Thatcher was not the premier of Saskatchewan, or a former premier. His father Ross was a premier. — online comment from RYAN ARMSTRONG I wholeheartedly agree with the content of the article. The Law Society of Upper Canada often proceeds on the basis of guilty until proven guilty (as no one seems to be found innocent). The playing field is never level and the constant threat of costs together with the legal costs required to defend a discipline hearing make the choice to mount a full and complete defence daunting. LSUC is constantly advocating the use of ADR in practice but has absolutely no such process in place for its own discipline proceedings. I could go on forever about the level of unfairness directed towards sole practitioners and small firm lawyers. Until an appellate court finally hears the proper case and severely criticizes a law society procedure on a discipline hearing I do not see the situation changing any time soon. — online comment from CHRIS I think LSUC may be more interested in "cherry picking" and mollifying aggressive complainants Well, that's surprising. NOT! In the real world, the big law firms and lawyers who are powerful, wellconnected or influential are given preferential treatment, both in-court and in Law Society matters. To see that, one needs look no further than the case of one R. Alan Eagleson where the LSUC did its best to look the other way until the criminal convictions and evidence of other wrongdoing compelled the LSUC to get around to disbarring Eagleson. It's nice to have friends in high places. — online comment from SAM C Interesting that the article doesn't mention LSUC v. George Douglas Hunter. A great example of a situation in which the law society's discipline hearing seemed more influenced by who the accused was than what he'd done. — online comment from ANDY Re: The 'scourge' of unrepresented litigants January 2013 This article is an unfortunate mischaracterization of my research. The hackneyed adage that those who represent themselves have "fools for clients" is irrelevant to the reality the vast majority of people are representing themselves not through choice but through necessity. With deliberate irony, I have also suggested that those who were formerly the "patients" or clients of the legal system are now taking matters into their own hands ("taking over the asylum"). Anyone who has followed my research will know that rather than applauding the Meads decision for drawing attention to this issue, I am very concerned it inadvertently reinforces the stereotype of self reps as crazy and foolish (not Justice Rooke's intention). Sadly, this article is a perfect example of the erroneous conflation that I feared. It is both inaccurate and an abdication of moral responsibility to paint all self reps as crazy and foolish, and does nothing to help us to address this crisis in our courts. — online comment from JULIE MACFARLANE Even if this article is not a perfect reflection of [Julie Macfarlane's] position, I got from it [her] concern as [she has] just expressed here (and so I found the sentence that began "Still, she applauds . . . " to be confusingly out of place). Anyway, thank you for your clarification. With the Meads decision, I do not think Justice Rooke was aiming at the majority of self reps who are doing the best they can. He was aiming at a particularly egregious subset (some of whom must know that they are spouting nonsense) and at their "gurus," who surely know they are selling BS. — online comment from CHAD CONRAD I was one of professor Macfarlane's interviewees last March and I have been following the unfolding story of self reps very closely. This article is really two separate ones, only nominally connected. As an outsider I don't know how much resistence there is already, or will be, to professor Macfarlane's findings. Obviously she has concerns about that, and I must assume they are warranted. The media, and especially the legal media, needs to demonstrate a great deal more initiative in pursuing the self-rep issue, which is an ongoing tragedy. I expect in due course the OPCA story will be little more than a curious historical artifact. — online comment from CHRIS BUDGELL Canadian Lawyer welcomes letters to the editor but reserves the right to edit for space, taste, and libel considerations. Please include your full contact information in correspondence. 6 F e b r uary 2013 www.CANADIAN L a w ye r m a g . c o m

• Cover